by Denika Blacklock

08 August 2006

Denika Blacklock of Saskatchewan, Canada, is a UNV local governance and minority rights specialist with the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Pristina, Kosovo, where she develops projects to promote democratic practices and the participation of minorities in government. Her assignment is funded through the UNV-Canada Corps Trust Fund.

Living in Kosovo is like living anywhere – there are cinemas, shops, restaurants, cafes and satellite TV. On the other hand, it is a whole other world – and a world away from my home in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. Before moving here earlier this year, I had visited Kosovo on numerous occasions while working for a minority rights NGO in Germany. But visiting here and living here are very different experiences. Hotels tend to benefit from generators and water pumps – my house does not. In fact, the day I moved in, we went seven hours with no running water.

To give you a better understanding of what life is like in Pristina, imagine this: 400,000 people live in a geographic space equivalent to Prince Albert. Kosovo’s two million people reside in an area similar to that of Prince Albert, Leask and Emma Lake. The local water supply is polluted with depleted uranium. The air is so polluted that you cannot see clearly from one side of town to the other. Manhole covers are a relatively new phenomenon since most were taken during the war as a much needed resource. There are more white UN Range Rovers on the street per capita than, I imagine, anywhere else in the world.

Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations since the end of the war with Serbia in 1999. The short but devastating war and preceding 10 years of repression from Belgrade resulted in large numbers of Albanian and Serbian refugees, a dilapidated economy, infrastructure and two health care and education systems. In the 1990s, the ethnic Albanians operated unofficial hospitals and schools, while the reverse is now true for ethnic Serbs in Kosovo since the end of the war.

I work here as a local government and minority rights specialist for UNDP. The job is both stimulating and emotionally challenging. Given the large international community presence here, life is not overly difficult – there is always something to do, people to see or a weekend trip being planned. But there are aspects of my life now that I could never have fathomed growing up in Prince Albert.

In the first instance – I have bars on my windows, an eight-foot high iron fence around my house and an evacuation plan should the tenuous security situation deteriorate much further. A taxi home at night is not something I ponder – it’s a fact of life. It is just not safe to be a woman (or man) alone at night. For example, last week a grenade was thrown at a shop at the end of my road. Any building you enter (in particular UN buildings) requires an ID pass, and a security scan.

In the second instance, no electricity is something you learn to live with. The last weeks have seen regular electricity, but I have experience winter here. One hour of electricity in four, which means not hot water – so you shower in ice cold water, even when the temperature is -23 (both inside and out), or you learn to go without for two to three days at a time. A generator helps, but they are expensive, noisy, pollute the air within 10 square metres, and cost a fortune to run since the cost of petrol is so high (residents of Prince Albert rejoice – your unleaded fuel is half the price than in Europe). So I wear three layers of clothing to work. It’s shocking to me just how much I took the energy infrastructure in Canada for granted.

I used to try to think of living in Kosovo as something akin to camping. Camping was an ‘adventure.’ I have learned my lesson – there is no roasting of hotdogs and marshmallows here. This is life in Kosovo, and surprisingly, how I live now.